Matthew Valnes

This professor has taught: MUSC204, MUSC205, MUSC361, MUSC436, MUSC448U, MUSC648

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Matthew Valnes MUSC205 Expecting an A- Anonymous 12/05/2023	It's obvious that Professor Valnes is passionate about the content he teaches. That being said, his lectures do tend to get pretty boring. If you miss a lecture you aren't really missing anything - the daily class slides are uploaded to Canvas. The first half of the semester covered popular music in the early-mid 20th century, and I found it to be pretty boring. However, the end of the semester does get more interesting as it moves into late 20th century music genres such as Disco and Punk. Assignments are pretty easy, but his grading on formal writing assignments can be harsh. Overall pretty decent professor, but not the most interesting.
Matthew Valnes MUSC204 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 11/29/2023	Easy class, only thing that is mandatory are the discussions on Friday. I would take it, but the discussions are so pointless.
Matthew Valnes MUSC205 Expecting an A- Anonymous 10/19/2023	Easy enough class but the class could not be more boring and tedious. The class pace is atrocious with the class starting in the 1950's and by the halfway point of the semester not even clearing the 1960's. Class is honestly not even worth showing up for. Professor Valnes seems like a nice person but bores throughout his lectures.
Matthew Valnes MUSC204 Expecting an A Anonymous 08/02/2023	This class is exactly what you want from a gen-ed. Super easy (all of the exams are online and open-note), a totally reasonable amount of work, and very interesting material. The discussions are mandatory for a participation grade, but they're good to go to anyways. The course content is really interesting and will definitely expose you to some new music and/or ideas.
Matthew Valnes MUSC204 Expecting an A Anonymous 06/01/2023	Interesting class, discussion session is a must attend, assignments were good
Matthew Valnes MUSC204 Expecting an A- Anonymous 05/21/2023	This class would've been a lot better if Valnes was actually good at keeping the students accountable for discussions/work. He is also great at making a potentially interesting topic, like music, very boring. The students in this class, with me included, gradually lost interest over this class and eventually I'd say at least 70% of the people started skipping it. I'd say this class was an easy A but the experience of the class was extremely bland at best and I didn't quite agree with Valnes's idea of assigning a hard genre to a piece of music. All in all, very uneducational class, though if you want an easy A go for it. I would rather take a gen-ed class with a professor that seems to be at least a little bit passionate about the course subject though.
Matthew Valnes MUSC204 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/19/2023	Awesome professor, easy class, and easy on the grading depending on your TA. Although I doubt there is a bad MUSC204 TA out there. Take it with Valnes, he is very knowledgeable about the course. There are a couple of essays, none of them being super long until the last one which was at most only 1000 words.
Matthew Valnes MUSC204 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/24/2022	Professor Valnes is a nice and understandable professor. His MUSC204 class consists of readings and music to listen to before class. Although the readings are fairly long, I believe that the TAs and/or the professor will briefly talk about it in discussion or lecture. It is best to skim through the readings as best as you can because they may appear on the midterms. Dr. Valnes is clearly passionate about what he is teaching and is straightforward with the content that he teaches. If you take notes during lecture (he provides you the slides on ELMS too), the final exam and midterms should be easy because the questions are exactly from the notes. He also gave us a Spotify playlist filled with songs to review or listen to for the midterms since there was a listening portion. Personally, I thought his lectures were engaging and fairly interesting, as I took this particular class not just for the gen-ed requirement, but also because I liked music. Overall, Dr. Valnes does an outstanding job teaching and I would like to give credit to my TA as well for being as caring and helpful as Dr. Valnes.
Matthew Valnes MUSC436 Expecting an A florm 05/22/2022	Valnes was a nice guy and an easy grader, but the structure of this class wasn't great. He'd assign a pretty long reading and some recordings to listen to before each class, but then relied more or less completely on us to lead the discussions. We'd usually first listen to one of the recordings together, then break up into small groups to talk about it and the reading, and then discuss as a class. I wish he had actually taught us more, because he's clearly very interested and excited about the material. That way, class probably wouldn't have been as boring as it was. Participation was 15% of the grade, but the syllabus didn't establish clear guidelines on how it would be graded. Fortunately he was pretty lenient with it, so even if you rarely spoke you wouldn't lose that many points. There were only a handful of other assignments, including three album reviews, two exams, and a final project (with a proposal and brief presentation for it). The exams were online and partially take-home. You had to show up for the listening portion where he'd play 5 songs (he gave us a list of potential options ahead of time) and then you'd identify the title, artist, and style of jazz. After that, you could just go home to finish the rest of the exam over the next couple days, which consisted of a few short answer questions and one longer essay. Some parts did require you to reference specific readings, but none of it was hard. The final project could be either a research paper about basically any topic in jazz relevant to the class, or an annotated discography where you'd come up some theme and write liner notes for 8-10 songs that relate to it. Almost everyone chose the latter option.
Matthew Valnes MUSC205 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 05/17/2022	Professor Valnes seems like a nice guy, but his lectures were just super boring. I was a little disappointed because I was looking forward to taking this class, but I wasn't engaged by the material at all even though it should be fun. The class was definitely easy to do well in, so no complaints there, I just wish Professor Valnes was more passionate about the material and maybe it would be more interesting.
Matthew Valnes Expecting an A+ Anonymous 05/09/2022	Nice guy. Seeks to make an inclusive environment. Everything's online except for the discussion section. Went to class at first then stopped grade was constant. Assignments are easy, a couple of essays of 300 words, 500 words, 750 words, and a final 3-4 page essay (2x spaced). Two midterms and a final, all online and open notes (I think, if not you can just use them anyway). The listening section is name artist and name of 5/~16 songs from the list. (ps you can use shazam on your computer and it's discrete) Was 2 gen eds. Easy A. 10/10 recommend.